Many technical writers and documentarians benefit immensely after attending relevant conferences. These events offer networking opportunities, access to Subject Matter Experts, and impetus to pursue novel solutions to work conundrums.

The annual Write the Docs conferences offer glimpses of what is possible in my work environment. After Write the Docs NA 2017 event, I initiated several new projects/processes to elevate the state of internal communication, raise awareness for customer-facing documents, and organize tech communication community at work. The initial results have been encouraging.

We’ll explore how ideas from past and present Write the Docs events have acted as catalysts to overcome challenges and obstacles. We’ll also discuss why the conference is relevant for tech writers, regardless of their industry affiliations.

Bio

Mo Nishiyama is a Technical Writer at Oregon Health & Science University’s Information Technology Group. His professional passions include transforming dense engineer-speak into customer-friendly support articles, cultivating a community of tech writers in the workplace, promoting a human-centric work culture, and sharing career/life experiences through public speaking.

It’s understood that great documentation is essential to use software properly, but in a world with ever-changing specifications and hot new features, how can documentation remain fresh and easily accessible? We’ll discuss how New Relic has approached this, from the process of making sure the latest correct information is available, to updating the interface to make it easy for users to find exactly what they’re looking for, to analyzing our users’ habits and feedback to provide necessary tools and updates in the future.

We’ll take a stroll down memory lane to visit some of the early layouts of the documentation site, and we’ll discuss the present iteration of the site and the UI changes that were made and why. We’ll also look into the future and provide a glimpse into what we can expect from the site in the months to come.

With tens of millions of items in its collections, Internet Archive is one of the largest libraries in the world. It provides free and open access to all of its materials to anyone with an internet connection, making it a treasure trove for researchers, historians, and curious individuals.

Of course, having a collection that large doesn’t help anyone if it’s difficult to access. To help with this, Internet Archive has released a number of open APIs and tools to allow people to upload and download items, as well as data mine the metadata for the entire collection.

In this session we will:

Give you a tour of Internet Archive and its collections Introduce you to the APIs and tools you can use to access and contribute to the Archive* Show examples of how other people and institutions are using the Archive

Speaker Bio:

In VM (aka Vicky)'s nearly 20 years in the tech industry she has been an analyst, programmer, product manager, software engineering manager, director of software engineering, and C-level technical business and open source strategy consultant. Vicky is the winner of the Perl White Camel Award (2014) and the O'Reilly Open Source Award (2016).

We'd like to welcome Portland Accessibility and User Experience group (@pdxa11yux) as we host a joint meetup/workshop for writing more inclusively.

We’ll share inclusivity guidelines and tips, then break into groups and apply and share what we’ve learned. Together, we’ll uncover solutions to make your writing more inclusive. Please bring any burning accessibility comments or questions and any samples of relevant work you'd be willing to share and discuss.

Wacom -- a company which develops Pen Input hardware -- needed a user help system to move beyond static PDFs. Their solution was to separate product-specific PDFs into a series of, mostly common, HTML topic pages. These HTML file were, in turn, processed into a web deliverable package via Python scripting.

The solution is complex, as the Wacom system includes interrelationships between 150+ topics across over 30 products and 14 languages.

The solution required “a more technical Tech Writer” -- as it required knowledge of HTMLPythonJavaScriptExcel Macros

Wacom implemented their solution by integrating their tech writer in their Engineering team. They also included a dedicated engineering resource to support design and development of their technical docs.

At 6:30, I'll make a few announcements. Anyone who wants to try out a "preview" of a conference talk (5-10 min), or just present their draft proposal for comments, can speak to the group (or ask questions) after that.

Erin Grace and David Bastedo had a chance to attend the Support Driven Expo conference in June and will be here to share their experiences and what they learned. Support Driven Expo is a conference that brings together customer support professionals to learn from each other and share best practices through talks, workshops, and unconferences. Learn more about how documentation plays a role in customer support and other trends in the support community.

Join us for light refreshments and conversation. Please arrive by 6:15 as the doors lock after that time.

Join us for this month's meetup and explore the topic of translation. Documentarian and translator Amy Coulter will lead us through the process of buying translations.

"Can't we just run this through Google Translate? Can't my colleague translate that, isn't she from that country? Can we just lob this over the fence to a big LSP and be done with it? Can we find a freelancer ASAP?Local editor, translator and writer Amy Coulter will be happy to answer all of these questions for you (and more), giving you some tools for tackling a translation-related action item."

Join us for light refreshments and conversation. Please arrive by 6:15 as the doors lock after that time.

NOTE: This will be a 90 minute *workshop*, and we may stay as late as 8:30 pm.

This workshop is an introduction to writing about identity in technology. Taught by the editor of The Responsible Communication Style Guide, this workshop covers how to write effectively, efficiently, and appropriately about topics tied to individuals' identities, including accessibility, gendered terms, and pronouns. It also covers how a style guide can be an effective part of the workflow when creating and promoting technology projects (including open source), writing documentation, and even developing software.

Bio: Thursday Bram is the editor of The Responsible Communication Style Guide. She writes about intersectional feminism, cryptocurrencies, kitchen sinks, and anything else that catches her interest. She organizes conferences, sticker swaps, and potluck dinners on a regular basis. You can find Thursday online at ThursdayBram.com.

...You've done the work to set up OpenAPI specification REST calls for your APIs (Inaccurately known as "Swagger"). You have reference information. But you discover that few users are actually trying REST calls on your system. You're wondering: "What else do I need?"

This presentation will describe the Minimal Viable Documentation (MVD) for RESTful APIs, also known as "What do I need for my developer portal?"

Based loosely on Kristof Van Tomme's presentations on Developer Experience, Mike will describe the MVD for a developer portal, what will help your developers try out your APIs.